Mules and Men was the actual Zora Neale Hurston recommendation I got from a friend of mine, I just started with Every Tongue Got to Confess for reasons. And frankly, the first half of this volume is pretty much like the stories in the latter, the difference being instead of just reading the story, we're instead sitting with Ms, Hurston as she collects the stories from old men drinking beer, men on their way to the swamps to cut lumber, people going to a different neighborhood around Orlando for a toe dance...
Which adds a new layer on to the stories, since it's a but easy to slip into a head space where you're sitting next to the teller, listening to them tell their tales.
The second half involves Ms. Hurston's time in New Orleans, collecting and writing down the knowledge of the two headed doctors, the conjure men, the root workers, the Hoodoo priests. Much like what I've read about Haitian Voudon, it looks like most of this was syncretic with either Catholic or Baptist/Methodist theology, to the point where the Bible is the biggest tome of Conjure, and Moses was the GOAT conjureman. Most of this is fascinating, filled with lots of coring vegetables and stuffing people's names in them to curse them, finding out goofer dust is basically cemetery dirt, and one or two rituals that may have been practiced in era, but these days would likely be written off as either sensationalism or satanic. (At least two cats get killed during her various apprenticeships.)
It is all fascinating reading, and a picture of an era that has passed, even if the legacy of that era and the preceding ones still linger on in contemporary society. Really happy I found these.
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